John W. James

Where were you when I needed you?

The saddest question we ever hear is, "Where were you when I needed you?"

That's what people ask when they find out what we do in helping grievers. We're presenting helpful and accurate information on this site, at the time you need it most, with the hope that you'll never need to ask that question.

It's an honor and a sad privilege to be addressing you, knowing that each of you has recently experienced the death of someone important to you. We also know some of you are reading this because of your care and concern for someone who is confronted by the death of someone important in their life.

We bring our personal experience in dealing with the deaths of people who were important to us, and our professional know-how in helping grievers for more than 30 years. We'll help you distinguish between the "raw grief" that is your normal and natural reaction to the death, and the equally normal "unresolved grief" that relates to the unfinished emotions that are part of the physical ending of all relationships.

A basic reality for most grieving people is difficulty concentrating or focusing. With that in mind, we asked Tributes.com to print our articles in a large type font to make them easier to read. Sharing our concern for grieving people, they agreed.

Articles & Media

If I Start Crying Will I Be Able To Stop?

by Russell Friedman & John W. James of The Grief Recovery Institute

Grieving people sometimes hold back their tears based on the fear that if they start crying, they won’t be able to stop. To the best of our knowledge, no one has ever been unable to stop crying. The body has its own emotional thermostat which shuts off what sometimes seems to be an unending supply of tears.

The fear of not being able to stop usually has much more to do with an idea that we will be judged for showing our emotions than any reality connected to crying. It is partially based on the fact that most of us were taught when we were young that sad, painful or negative feelings were to be avoided at all cost, and if we were unable to avoid them, not to show them in public. Growing up, we heard things like: “If you're going to cry, go to your room”; “Knock off that crying or I'll give you a reason to cry”; or, “Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.” That’s just a small sampling of remarks which may have dictated how you react to the grief events that affect your life. With just a few of those comments planted in your belief system, it’s logical that you might be unwilling or unable to show or express the normal and natural painful reactions to the death of someone important to you, and that you could believe that if you started crying you wouldn't be able to stop. [A study indicates that by the time we are 15 years old, we have been subjected to more than 20,000 references indicating that it is not appropriate to feel bad, and if we do, we should not do it in front of others.]

While we’ve never known anyone to be unable to stop crying, we have seen too many people who could not or would not take any actions to deal with their grief because of an inordinate fear of any expression of their sad, painful or negative feelings. If you’ve been a little hard on yourself for not crying, give yourself a break. Trust the fact that you have some feelings about not crying to indicate that you really do have feelings about the person who died. Recovery from grief is achieved by a series of small and correct actions taken by the griever. The first action for you may be just to allow yourself not to cry.